Once more the multi-faceted fandom convention returned! Many guests new and old appeared including various YouTube creators like Team Four Star, the Nostalgia Critic Doug Walker and Malcolm Ray from Channel Awesome, Glass Reflection’s Arkada, Derek the Bard from Chasing the Muse, Linkara of Atop the 4th Wall, and Guest of Honor Austin Creed (Xavier Woods of the WWE’s New Day) from the Up Up Down Down Video Games along with WWE NXT talent Brennan Wiliiams.

I started Friday by arriving for my badge then I went to the Xavier Woods and Brennan Williams WWE/NXT autograph session. There were quite a few people and even some in wrestling cosplay like my friends who were Tiger Mask W and Tiger the Dark, and others as Becky Lynch and Bray Wyatt. Tons of folks had not only New Day shirts (I myself had my Strong Style Shinsuke Nakamura cap on along with a Street Fighter T-Shirt I got from Chop Shop Goods in the past) but also a lot from the Bullet Club/Elite who are ‘rivals’ to the New Day. I gave the duo some Pocky to honour and reflect on the old times I first met Woods when he was with TNA and then NXT. That was 9 years ago he reminded me; man time flies yet he recalled me! Brennan was very joyful and into the otaku interests upon meeting him as well.

An influx of 80+ attendees came for the D20 Live Q & A then the Group Created RPG of Charlotte the Spider Summoning Half Orc Sorceress trying to find the murderer of her Dryder former boyfriend “Edward”. She ends up fighting then fleeing the law, kidnapping a detective friend named Steve (perhaps from last year’s D20 Live Attack on Titan RPG) and blowing up the alchemy store run by the evil true culprit Mr. Big the alchemy dealer by combating his ninjas on scorpions with her army of giant spiders and fire spells. She did have to go to jail for trying to pilfer the store of a Jade Spider so her story might yet continue in the future...

I went out to get some sushi from Ajio Sushi, which was next to the new Arcade Gaming area at Super 1Up Games down the street from the convention. I decided in waiting for my order to play some old school Marvel vs. Capcom as Morrigan and War Machine and did well against the computer and some other attendees so guess I still got some of my old practice skills left.

Friday night was topped off by the insanity called Super Feud! 4 teams participated for the trophy of best Mario Party 2 players: Team Four Star who supported Xavier Woods’ “rival” Kenny Omega of the Bullet Club/The Elite, Team Arcadia who also went heel by beating up someone for AMERICA, The Super Best Friends of Hamilton who were the defending champs with their loaves of Wonder Bread, and team Kawaii Muscle of Woods and Brennan. Each team had to have 1 member play each round of the game (thank goodness it was the low setting of 20 rounds because 50 would have lasted all night long) and then they tag in another teammate for the next round and so forth. The trash talk got hot and heated from questioning Team Four Star’s skills aside dubbing other properties, to who was the “Better Woolie” between Super Best Friends’ Woolie and Kawaii Muscle’s Brennan. It was an awesome event that even the Wrestling Observer posted about in their Daily News Updates! I have videos on my channel from this event and more that I’ll plug at the end, and ConBravo posted some live streams of events as well which can be found on the website link above on their YouTube icon.

Early Saturday morning started off with the Nostalgia Critic Q & A with my questions about BILL made on the spot since Smurfs 2. Topics ranged all over the place like with the Disney live movie remakes, voice acting tips, the evolution of the Channel Awesome and characters, appearances in anime, Emoji The movie and crossover channel requests, new editorials, considering the shorter old format returns and a bunch of other topics for a packed room for 90 minutes. But the best moment had to be this one chibi cosplaying Critic who came with his mom who explained he watches the shows as well as Angry Video Game Nerd that he has 2 plushies of the Nerd and Critic too!

The afternoon was pretty free to do as I wanted so I went to the Cosplay for a Cure/Escape Room/Console Gaming in the Room of Requirement. After asking for advice I got another photo shoot done in my revised Shinra of Durarara cosplay which combines the usual lab coat, glasses and Celty plushie with swimming shorts he had on while shirtless in the season 1 finale when Celty tempts him in her own bikini. I did it in a classroom setting and it came out pretty well!

Late in the afternoon I attended the Anime 2017 Panel with Glass Reflection host Arkana and 3 ConBravo staff panelists. They gave their recommendations and then opened the floor for others to give suggestions. My 3 choices of hidden gems were Interview with Monster Girls (a better take on Monster Musume and potentially A Centaur’s Life due to not relying on just fan service), Royal Tutor (Ouran High School Host Club meets Mahou Sensei Negima), and Restaurant to Another World (Food Wars but with a fantasy approach and like a day off for RPGs but hopefully has an actual plot to why the door appears). Other anime brought up included Gundam Thunderbolt, Tiger Mask W (with the wish he was in the Best of the Super Juniors and G1-Climax tourneys in New Japan Pro Wrestling, though his “good friend” Kota Ibushi made the latter), Alice and Zoroku, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid (Kanna is best girl!), Keijo (now a sport in Europe for those butt bumping athletes), Berserk, Attack on Titan, Konosuba, and more. They also touched upon the best Opening Songs of the season, the Amazon/Netflix controversy/competition and how it’s harder to get into longer series like Boruto.

I got some time to get in some Pokémon Moon battles with the Pokémon Gym Leader Squad. If it were the older games from last year I wanted to play the competitive format but with Moon/Sun I haven’t had as much time to play it (I am now 2 Pokemon short of a Pokédex at least) so I used an almost all Shiny Team that included a level 97 Mawile while the rest were level 100 (all teams get scaled down to level 50 from there) with Starmie, my Crobat I caught named Langstrom, Marowak, and my allowed 2 Legendary Pokémon Suicine and Tapu Koko which got a few TAPU KOKO chants! I went 2-1 overall, losing to Coloress’ Steel Team but beating Nanu (Bug) and Riley (Dark) for 2 Pin Badges. I also got my shiny Kadabra traded back and forth with a friend to have my Shiny Alakazam finally evolved, and I was given a Solgaleo while helping evolve the Porygon Evolutionary line to aid my own Pokédex!

This time I got to participate in Karaoke Bravo. I did “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi. I saw a few cosplayers there as well, from a trio of Deadpools to Lucoa from Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.

I got back to work aiding near the cameras and helping wherever needed at this year’s D20 Live Star Wars RPG. The newbie this year was the Nostalgia Critic who had a blast in many ways as the Droid Lucky. Nash Bozard was a multi-accented Jedi, Dr Terawatt was their bombs expert with many thermal detonators at hand, and Linkara was another Droid who could hack both computers and Stormtroopers. The session went from dealing with Endor to jumping into a Death Star Moon to shut it down for good. Oh and more pillaging and math made its way into the show. There was so much more insanity that will get a video soon on their YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/D20Live so keep checking there by subscribing as the Q & A is already up. Hundreds of fans lined up and you can see those on my YouTube channel along with other videos that capped off the night!

BOUNTY OF FINDS

-In Artist Alley, I got from Hunter Geek a nicely braided magnet once more, this time the Soul Eater logo. They’re @HunterGeek on Twitter

-Another duo of artists cosplaying as Ochaco and Kacchan Bakugo from My Hero Academia who can be located at http://starexorcist.tictail.com/ was where I got the entire Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Sticker set (Tohru, Elma, Lucoa and Kanna), the pair of Revolutionary Girl Utena stickers (Utena and Anthy), and some of the My Hero Academia stickers for Deku, All Might, and Shoto. I got a mini-Ochaco one thrown in with their website on the back.

-Cosplay for a Cure https://www.flickr.com/people/cosplayforacure/ as I mentioned did fine work again and helped me overcome some shyness security concerns in doing a much more mature Shinra from Durarara cosplay shoot in a classroom where I combined his normal lab coat outfit and his swimwear look from the end of season 1’s finale. I got the CD of the photo shoot out of it and donated to a fine cause.

-For D20 Live they had their first ever merchandise with buttons which I did purchase.

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